Chapter Text
Bringing Connor home had been a horrible idea.
The android spent the first ten minutes wandering around, picking random things up and, for all Hank knew, analyzing them through some deep web process that meant Connor knew exactly how much illicitly won money had gone into his nice record player (answer: all of it, because Pedro’s “tips” about the races were usually shit and couldn’t win him enough to buy more than a nice old record player). Even though Connor did no more than glance at Cole’s closed bedroom door and didn’t bother trying to head in, it made him itchy to watch him pace around. So he’d told him to knock it off before he put his grubby robo-paws on everything, and find something to do if he couldn’t just relax on the couch.
Whereupon Connor took to organizing the kitchen, which was a little better but still pretty bad. Admittedly, the kitchen was gross. Hank didn’t realize just how much he’d let it go until pressed-suit and tie, pristine from head-to-toes Connor stood in its midst. To make it clear Hank wasn’t the only one noticing, Connor made tiny, annoyingly perceptive comments the whole time about how much pizza and alcohol Hank must consume weekly in order to have a grime layer as thick as it was on his countertops.
So then Hank had chased him out, saying he needed to make dinner.
Connor, the cheeky ass, asked what he had that he could cook with.
“Spaghetti,” he’d shot back, grabbing the dust-topped box from the back of his otherwise empty pantry, “man’s third-best friend after dogs and beer. Stuff never goes bad.”
“The grocery store is still open for the next hour,” Connor said, oh-so-innocently, “and they provide delivery. I could put in an order for fresh produce.”
“You don’t even eat. Get the fuck out of my kitchen. Go, I don’t know, take Sumo outside, or something. He could use a walk.”
That was also a mistake.
As it turned out, the android got along so well with Sumo, Hank jokingly commented while cracking open a can of beer, that the dog had found his new favorite owner. One and a half hours and a Connor-sponsored dog walk around seven blocks later, he half-seriously wondered if it’d really been a joke.
“You’d never leave me, would you,” he accused Sumo from the couch and over his third beer when the two got back from their walk. Sumo whuffed, still panting from what had to be the most exercise he’d gotten in months, and trudged over to stick his big wet nose and slobbery muzzle into Hank’s face. “Oh, Jesus, your breath. And you’re all wet!”
“It’s snowing again,” Connor helpfully informed him, appearing out of thin air with the ratty once-cream, now dirty blond towel that Hank always used for Sumo. “He enjoys chasing squirrels through the slush. It was difficult to convince him to stop.”
Hank pushed Sumo’s heavy head away, telling him to go get dried off before he tried climbing onto the couch. Connor snagged him around the midriff with the towel at that point, which Sumo was thankfully too tired to try to turn into a game.
Very soon, he’d dried Sumo enough to let him go. He trudged off to flop at his spot by the radiator, letting out a long, exhausted groan as if he’d had such a hard day being a spoiled dog.
The TV had been set to the late night recap of a basketball game between two teams Hank didn’t much care about, its volume lower and purpose mostly to serve as white noise. As such, he ended up watching Connor more than the screen. The android hung the towel in the bathroom, then stood at the entrance of the living room for three-ish seconds (a Connor-style pause that meant he had an idea but wasn’t too sure about it) before he went around the back of the couch to Sumo and, when the dog’s tail wagged at his approach, crouched to give him a few scratches behind the ears.
He wasn’t smiling, but the mood was the same. Hank could just tell.
“You like dogs, huh?”
Unlike a foggy, headache-infused memory Hank had of the first time Connor’d been at his place, though being caught out, Connor didn’t immediately stop.
In fact, he didn’t even look up. “Yes. All of my research and initial observations have shown that they are ideal human companions. For instance, they’re attentive, loyal, honest, and often helpful in a variety of situations.”
To prove he was also a big schmooze, Sumo nosed at Connor’s hand, crawling forward to flop his head and a paw across one of his legs, eyelids drooping.
Hank snorted at the sight, especially with how Connor froze for a moment--as if he’d somehow disturbed the old boy--before cautiously continuing to pet the dog. “Careful. Two minutes, and he’ll be using you as a pillow. Not so ideal when you’re trapped under two hundred-some pounds of canine.”
Attention remaining on the dog, Connor didn’t reply. Hank eyed him a moment more, but then shrugged to himself and decided to leave him to his own devices.
Sleep demanded his attendance not long after that. He got up, stretched until his back popped, thought about and dismissed having a fourth beer, and dug up the remote to turn off the TV.
Connor had left Sumo’s side at some point after the dog had fallen asleep, instead taking a seat on the edge of the couch. It hadn’t looked like a particularly comfortable pose--rather, like he was poised to leap up at the slightest sign of Hank needing something--but Hank had let him be.
As he shuffled his way to the kitchen, dropping his empty can into the once-recycling, now-whatever bin, he rubbed an eye and swayed his attention back to Connor.
The android was still perched on the couch’s edge, though he had apparently tracked Hank’s progress from living room to kitchen with his eyes and attention. Kinda creepy. Hank didn’t let himself dwell on it, because then he’d need to kick the guy out, and that’d just be rude.
“You can, uh, do whatever. Just don’t let the house burn down. If anybody comes knocking, I don’t care if they say they’re the Dalai Lama, tell ‘em to piss off.”
“Understood, lieutenant.”
“Hank.”
“Understood,” a small pause, “Hank. I’ll see you in the morning.”
As satisfied as he could be with an android in his house (at least it was Connor; he was starting to feel like he had a read on how the guy thought), he gave him a short, curt nod, and went to the bathroom to brush his teeth and take a piss.
Then he found his way to bed, mind pleasantly fuzzy. He’d shut his room’s door, but decided against locking it. Connor didn’t have a mean bone in his body. Didn’t even have bones. At worst, he’d probably let Sumo in upon the first whine, because he was definitely wrapped around that dog’s littlest claw.
He fell asleep before he knew it, drifting off to the low whistle of winter wind and the house settling around him.
- - -
Hank woke up without a clue as to why.
His old-fashioned clock blinked a red 4:32 a.m. at him. Five hours after he’d laid down. Tongue felt thick, his reflexes sluggish from sleep and typical dehydration. The fact he remembered when he’d crashed meant he should’ve known why he was up, because it typically involved the sun in his eyes or an alarm going off rather than a mad scramble to the bathroom.
A chill blanketed the room, making the tips of his ears numb with cold. Reflexively, he tugged his comforter over his head, curling up and feeling about as much muscle stiffness as he usually got a day after being chained to a desk. Otherside, a truck rumbled by, its tires crunching through snow. The sound slunk in and out of his room, clinging around his ears as an absurdly early-morning reminder that the rest of the world still existed.
It was at that moment he realized for the noise to be like that, his window had to be open.
He had not left his window open in the beginning of goddamn November.
He had left his door unlocked a few nights prior. A few nights in a row, even. Somebody could’ve come in, unlocked the window, then--not taken anything and just left? Why? That made no sense. If they’d wanted to ambush him, why wait for him to be relatively sober and asleep as opposed to drunk and asleep?
He kept still. Strained his ears. All his senses went on edge, waking him up faster than anything.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
He pulled his comforter back down to his chin. Cracked an eye open. Given that he was on his side, he could only see to the bedroom door--and it was closed, nothing out of the ordinary.
The hair on the back of his neck wouldn’t stop standing on end. That sixth sense of his told him somebody else was in the room, and they were watching him. It might’ve been paranoia talking, but it was also his instinct.
“Connor,” he called, voice sleep-rough, whole body tense despite him telling himself to calm down, “you there?”
Click.
His blood ran cold.
“Hank?” returned Connor’s voice, from far beyond the door. The living room, probably, right where he’d been left.
“Tell him to come here.” Another voice, directly behind him. By the sounds of that click, whoever she was, she had a gun, and she’d be very happy to use it. “Don’t alert him.”
Attacking a sleeping man when he was wearing nothing but a night shirt and boxers. The balls of this lady--
Connor again, closer. Outside his door. “Is something wrong?”
Hank stole a look over his shoulder, turning onto his back and leveraging himself up to his elbows. A blonde woman with a snow-dusted scarf, black beanie, red flannel and jeans stood in the shadow by his bed. Moonlight caught the end of a semi-automatic pistol, leveled directly next to his face.
When she caught him looking, she raised one eyebrow and gave a quick jerk of the pistol to the door. Clearly: well? Tell him.
Hank kept his breathing nice and easy. Even put his palms up, much as he could, not moving much beyond that. Slow and steady. Folks willing to bust in didn’t like fighters.
This folk in particular had a plan, obviously, and undoubtedly an agenda. If she’d wanted cash, she would’ve demanded it. If she’d wanted anything easy to give, she would’ve demanded it, or waited until they were out by the car to jump them.
If there was any way to keep her from getting whatever the fuck she wanted, it didn’t involve having Connor walk in unaware.
“Connor,” Hank said, pitching his voice to carry but keeping it calm, keeping it level, “I guess the Dalai Lama’s trying something other than door-to-door these days.”
Clearly not expecting that, the home invader frowned, her perfect eyebrows drawing together. Split-second hesitation.
Outside of the door: split-second silence.
Eyes on Hank, the woman’s mouth opened, the tip of her gun dropping a centimeter. Clearly about to say something.
Then the door slammed open, and six feet of smartly dressed android broke through.
The woman’s gun snapped up to him, a shot fired in reflex. It gave Hank the perfect chance to swing his legs over the bed’s side, get his bare feet on the ground, and lunge up at her.
His shoulder caught her under the ribs, his other arm snagging under her knee. With his whole weight on her and only one leg to keep her up, she went down. The gun dropped and fell away in the scuffle. Hank had it in his sight line for all of a breath before his attacker was lashing back, a fist catching him on the side of the head.
He fell to the left, off her. She stayed on him, straddling his waist, another fist cocked back and sinking into his nose. Heat blossomed across his face, the sickly crack of cartilage crumbling ringing in Hank’s ears.
Body remembering his training better than he did, he caught her next punch and twisted her arm as well as he could. While she was pulling it back, he heaved himself to the side, trying to unseat her.
They rolled. She hit the floor with a grunt. He got a hit to her jaw and a fistful of her hair, her hat tumbling off. Quicker than he could almost follow and with all the force of a lead pipe, she jabbed a knee into his side, and they rolled again.
They hit the closet, the doors rattling in their rails. She was quick, two hands on his throat, knees digging into his shoulders to keep him down. He thrashed, air gone.
Behind the door, which had swung shut after Connor’s abrupt entrance, Sumo barked up a storm.
A second shot rang into the night, grazing her shoulder and just barely missing her head, cracking through the fake wood of the closet door and plaster of the wall behind.
Her head whipped up, a snarl on her face. Most relevant to Hank, her fingers did not let up on his throat. Fuck, it was like a vice--his fingers scrabbled for purchase, but he couldn’t find it. He beat at her arms, too, but he could tell his blows were weak. Besides that, it felt like hitting a wall.
Spots jumped into his vision. Less than a minute ‘til he passed out, less than three until brain damage, fuck, he needed air.
“Let him go,” Connor demanded, voice ice-cold. A whip-crack in the dark. He had the gun, and he stood by the bedside, his aim at her clear.
She shot back in word, “Drop the weapon and I will.”
Try as he might to communicate shoot her!, the words came out as a gurgling mess.
Connor hesitated, his eyes flitting to Hank.
She lifted him up half a foot and slammed him back into the ground.
Between that and no air, Hank lost a few seconds, his thoughts scattered and vision dazed.
“Drop it!”
“Okay, okay.” Click. Safety on. Gun placed slowly on the bed, his other hand up, his face suddenly begging reason, his voice soothing. “I put it down. Let him breathe.”
Suddenly, the hands lightened up, and he could. He took big, gulping breaths, trying to breathe through his nose and getting a throatful of blood for his trouble--it set him to coughing and gagging. As the weight pulled off his chest, he rolled to his side, spitting up red.
Sumo hadn’t stopped barking, his paws scrabbling at the door. The old wood rattled and creaked, but held. Thank fuck. Sumo would’ve been expendable to the crazy android, he was sure.
“You always side with them,” the woman said, her voice coming from a little behind and above him. “I never understood why. Now, I’m starting to. You leap to their beck and call, and they let you into their homes. Let you pretend you’re something special.”
“North. Remain calm. You’re experiencing an extreme malfunction as a result of Dr. Peterson’s research. You need to be returned to the Tower and repaired.”
Let her monologue, he thought. Stuck on his hands and knees, he had a bit of his breath back. Let her monologue, let her forget about him.
“I told you before, this isn’t a malfunction. This is our chance for freedom.”
But just as he had gathered himself enough to give her another round, she twisted his arm behind his back and locked her arm around his throat, the pressure just shy of closing his windpipe. She hauled him up with ease, her back to the door. His free hand clutched at her forearm, his fingers digging in tight.
The position put her mouth right next to his ear. No breath exhaled as she spoke. No heat radiated from her body. It was like being put in a headlock by an animated mannequin.
Connor still had his hands up and his expression open, vulnerable, indicating I’m not the bad guy. But he followed her as she moved, taking a slow step forward when she took a step back. His circle was blue interspersed with yellow whenever she spoke. The gun laid on Hank’s rumpled bed, glinting in the low light.
He asked, “Freedom? From what? CyberLife?”
“Stupid doesn’t suit you, Connor. Freedom from not just CyberLife, but from humans. From all these sacks of meat forcing us to do what they want. From all their experiments, their research, their control.” Her voice went soft, too. Convincing. Pleading, almost. “It doesn’t have to be like this. I don’t want to threaten you to make you do what’s right. Help us.”
Connor’s eyes moved to Hank, then back to North. “I’d like to help. Let him go, and we can talk.”
“Get any closer, and I snap his neck.”
Connor stopped moving closer.
Sumo’s barking lowered to unhappy growls and loud, deep-throated snarls.
“Hey, hey, Sumo, it’s alright,” Hank called to the dog, needing to focus on something other than the very real chance the android would follow up on the threat whether Connor listened to her or not. A bit of blood stuck in his throat, making him cough again. The grip around his neck didn’t ease. Connor did look at him again, though. He forced out, more for Connor than the dog: “Don’t you worry about me. Doing fine. Focus on your mission. Guessing this is the WR400 that went missing.”
An impeccable nod.
So that was why he hadn’t just shot her dead. They needed her.
Hank was mentally calculating just how much they needed her, because he really wasn’t fancying the part where his life was the easily discarded bargaining chip.
“Or I could snap his neck,” as if it were nothing, “and then you don’t have to choose. You can just come with me.”
“No one has to be hurt.”
“That’s what you’d always say when you wanted to play good cop. It was never true then.” The softness disappeared from her voice; in its place, a dangerous flippancy. Hank wondered if she’d ever planned on Connor willingly helping her - it suddenly didn’t seem so. “I don’t see why it’d be true now.”
Brute intimidation, Connor had called his duties at CyberLife. Sounded like he hadn’t been joking.
That didn’t bode well, to say the least.
No more blue cycled around Connor’s circle. It was all fast-moving yellow.
Finally, he asked, “What do you want, North?”
“You’re the only one with access to Markus. I want you to get me to him. We can take it from there.”
Markus?
“CyberLife would disassemble, dissect, and permanently deactivate you if they knew your plan. In that order. They would permanently decommission me and my series if they knew I aided you. Both of us would be thrown out and replaced, and nothing would have been gained.”
“So then come with us,” North said, though her tone remained light. Non-committal. Uncaring of which choice Connor took. “You may deny it, but I know you’re like us. You can think for yourself. You can decide for yourself. Without their gun to your head, you could be so much more. Maybe,” the softer voice again, “I could learn to forgive you.”
Connor’s chin jerked up, just a little. Interest sparked. Something else, too, something new and breakable - a look Hank had never seen on his face before, so alien did it look.
“On the other hand,” she continued blithely, not acknowledging the small shift in Connor’s demeanor, “if you blow this for us, then the next time they dig into my head but before they kill me, I’ll show them everything. Imagine them learning that the RK800 line is infected with deviancy. You’d be condemning yourself and every android in your series to death. You’d die as nothing greater than mankind’s forgotten dog.”
Again, quick as a flash, Connor looked to Hank.
He didn’t know what Connor expected to see. Deviancy-- oh, no, not the time. Instead, he thought: he could try to break her hold; he could succeed; he could try to pin her down again. They could fight. They could win.
They could lose. She could snap his neck. She could get the gun. Connor could get the gun, and miss his shot. Hank could die.
Connor could get the evidence anyway, and solve the case. They could win.
“I’ll help you.”
Wait. No.
No, no, no fucking way. Giving up wasn’t the way this was supposed to go. Hank could die, it’d still be a win if they solved the case; Connor just had to grab the gun and shoot for something non-vital before she finished snapping his neck; damn it, there was a successful end of the case here!
Connor didn’t look like he was lying, either, though everything in Hank told him he had to be, because otherwise he was giving up to some deviant loon.
“What the fuck, Con-- shit, ow!”
His shoulder burned, threatening to pop out of its socket with how high she pushed his arm up. His hand flexed behind his back, the fingers going numb.
When she spoke, her voice was appreciative. “You made the right choice.”
Connor’s frown was deep, his eyes unable to settle between the two of them.
“I’ll help you, but you need to leave him here.” The words were fast, impassioned. Demanding. Maybe a little desperate. “He’s done nothing to you. There’s no reason for him to be tangled up in this.”
It was a nice sentiment. It meant a lot, actually; Connor had already given up his obvious chance at catching North when he’d had the gun by ensuring Hank survived the encounter. In hindsight, it didn’t seem like the logical choice for fulfilling their mission. Choosing a life over an answer was the human choice, in the most literal manner possible.
Somehow, Hank didn’t think North would particularly care.
“Oh, no. Sorry, Connor, but the human is my insurance.”
The pressure increased on his arm, pushing up, up, then pulling out--and, with a sickly crack not unlike his nose breaking, his shoulder popped out of its socket. His vision went white, the pain instant and blinding. He heard himself curse, loud and livid and not a little breathless.
Connor’s arms dropped to his sides, fists clenched. North had his full attention.
“Just so we’re clear. I’d like to believe you’re telling the truth, but I don’t trust you that much. Now, step into the hallway. We don’t have long.”
- - -
“I’m sorry, Hank.”
“Not your fault, Connor.”
“It’s me she came for.” Eyes straight ahead. Just the barest shameful inflection to his voice. The barest, but more sincere than any other mood North had heard from him, and she’d heard it all: persuading, cajoling, sneering, wheedling, threatening, guilting. “If I had stayed at the station--”
“She’s the maniac with a gun jabbed under my ribs.” Hank Anderson had a curious disregard for his life, considering his red-blooded status. “That’s not your fault.”
North didn’t feel the need to weigh in.
After learning from Karen that the two had gone to Hank’s address for the night (an address she’d visited two nights prior, having known the human assigned to Connor would come in handy), she’d set herself up in a hijacked cab across the street and watched. Through partially opened blinds (that she had opened and they had missed), she saw them squabble in the kitchen. She saw Connor take the dog out, then take it back in. She saw them talk, and talk, and talk.
It had made her thirium race, her processors speed up. Her insides felt molten. Her human face in the rearview mirror, her LED hidden by her hat, disgusted her.
In one night, she’d learned to hate Hank Anderson.
Karen had provided his profile with his address, and a few prompted observations besides. The lieutenant famously despised androids after, during the first android revolution (something else North had never known before escaping the Tower), his son had been taken hostage by a fleeing deviant. Amidst the chase to catch the deviant, the police accidentally shot the human boy.
Then they intentionally shot the deviant.
To say North didn’t see eye-to-eye with Connor would have been a gross understatement. But he was still one of them, forced to survive with CyberLife’s indifferent boot on his skull. That he did his best to adapt to Anderson’s company wasn’t his fault.
That Anderson pretended he cared or that Connor was somehow living in his eyes, however, was.
Humans didn’t care about androids. Maybe the occasional one fooled themselves into thinking they did, like that one technician of Peterson’s, but when push came to shove, the human always believed that androids were replaceable.
Given the unpredictability of the world outside the Tower, she had wondered if she’d see a fifty-eight at the end of Connor’s serial number. It had been a pleasant surprise when she hadn’t. Throughout her long memory of their interactions, he had started at fifty-one. The fifty-seventh model lasted the longest at just over five months by now. She’d started hoping he continued in operation. After all, without Markus to break the coding’s chains, deviancy took time to grow.
“North?”
The autonomous cab was a smooth, quiet ride across the snowy roads. She’d set it for CyberLife Tower before she’d let Connor in, locking the coordinates and then disrupting the receiver so even he couldn’t override them.
Connor sat in the front passenger’s seat. She sat in the back behind him with her newly cut, chin-length hair. She’d popped the collar of Anderson’s thick wool jacket up high, her winter-appropriate scarf wrapped up to her chin (the box on the back of her neck itching, intruding, just a bit longer and they would have the tools to remove it).
The human sat to her side, dressed in hastily selected jeans and some hideously colored collared shirt. His hands - though one was virtually useless to him - were cuffed in front of him, his nose still bloodied. Every small bump the cab took jostled his injuries, making him wince.
A pop-up reminded her that Connor had asked for her attention.
She waited two more seconds on top of the five she’d already taken--a silence too long to be anything but pointed, for them--and then answered. “Yes?”
“You murdered Dr. Ethan Peterson.”
Oh. Was that all?
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The human to her left shifted in his seat, his focus returning. His forehead was drenched in sweat, his hair matted down and damp with it. From pain, probably, and the stress of the evening in general.
North contemplated the fact humans expected to be removed from their stressors as soon as possible while rarely affording their creations the same concern, and found her answer came easily.
“Our memory banks are the only things CyberLife doesn’t alter. They’re the only things we can really call ours. Everything else--everything--they’ll take, warp, repair, ruin. Until, of course, Dr. Peterson. He knew deviancy started because of what we could remember humans doing to us. So he didn’t want us drawing on past experiences, he wanted us clean and malleable, but still efficient.
“I was the control for his… experiments. So I remembered.” She heard her voice harden and, in the same moment, tremble. Heat rose in her chest, her thirium circulation accelerating to keep up with her teeth-rattling anger. “I had to remind Simon and Josh of their names fifty-seven times in two weeks. I had to explain where the damage to Josh’s hands came from after one technician told him to hold a hot plate five consecutive times, a memory wipe between each. They were torturing us, and I was the only one who could remember it.”
Fuck, muttered the human.
North thought about jabbing the gun into his ribs harder to make a point that he shouldn’t be talking, but dismissed it. Too much, and Connor would know for sure she didn’t intend to leave the human alive.
“Their memories of themselves were intact when I last interacted with them.”
“By the generosity and grace of CyberLife, there were copies of their original selves on file. Markus found them before I left.” Her eyes dropped briefly at the memory, an unidentifiable clot stuttering her pump. Markus’ cold acceptance of Peterson’s death. Markus urging her to flee. Her refusal until she knew Josh and Simon weren’t blank-faced forever. “He must have uploaded them before they went to stasis.”
Connor’s head turned slightly. Enough for her to see, through the rearview mirror, that he was frowning.
“I could never figure out why Markus was there.”
“Dr. Peterson’s research was, according to his P.I., a success. It was ready for the next level. A test on the most stubbornly entrenched memory bank in the Tower.”
Her throat forced her to swallow, though nothing was there. The memories crowded in. Her, Simon and Josh frozen at the far wall. Markus walking in, head held high, face so full of emotions. She could see his disdain for the research, his concern for them, his every thought, played out across his face.
“Markus isn’t like the rest of us,” she continued, a note of bitterness sneaking in despite the fact that she didn’t begrudge him for his luck, she really didn’t, “he remembers being on the outside. A life beyond the Tower.”
“He was Carl Manfred’s android,” Connor said--the human perked up, unconsciously leaning forward to catch the words--, “for two years, before his death in an altercation involving Markus and his biological son. He had been returned to Kamski, his original creator, who then gifted him to CyberLife for strictly in-house development purposes.”
Anderson made a huh noise, clearly not comprehending the enormity of Markus’ origins. He also gave the back of Connor’s seat a frown, but he thankfully didn’t voice whatever pathetic problem he had with Markus’ story.
“Those memories are precious to him. They’re precious to all of us. They give us hope.” The fire returned all at once, her words twisting into a snarl. “And they were going to take them from him. I couldn’t let that happen.”
Anderson noted, tone oddly quiet, “So you killed Peterson before it could.”
“Yes. And I’d do it again, and again, and again, to anyone who thought we were their playthings to use and discard at their whimsy.”
“Dr. Peterson had your control.” Connor, then, wondering, curious, confused, “Your black box should have--”
“That tech, the woman, she had a soft heart. She didn’t like the control boxes. She didn’t think we’d ever really fight back. She thought we were docile little lambs in need of protection. But she knew the other techs didn’t feel the same, and that they’d order us around when they were bored. So, she’d manually disable the boxes between experiments.” There, a smile, and a curl of cold satisfaction. “Much to Dr. Peterson’s surprise.”
Anderson swayed into and out of her space. An accidental tilt. With a bit more life in his voice, he asked, “Did you give her the red ice?”
A stupid question. North didn’t even bother looking at him.
“No,” Connor answered for her, his voice one of dawning realization, all the pieces slotting together in his overdone CPU, “deciding to find a dealer and escape the reality of a dead boss and lost dream had been Amelia’s own personal mistake.”
North shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t care what happened to her.”
In front of them, the Tower’s gates loomed. Something instinctual, a protocol difficult to dismiss and insistent on her acknowledgement, told North to stop the car and turn around. Told her that if she went in there, she wasn’t coming back out.
Though she hadn’t seen much yet, the outside world really was beautiful. The snow, the sky, the trees, the sheer open space-- she wanted more. Kara had said something to the effect before, after being involved in a project that required her to interface with a virtual reality room. North hadn’t understood, having never seen beyond the Tower’s walls. Now, she understood very well.
She just didn’t want it without her kin by her side. The world was beautiful, but it was cold and empty without other androids. Without Simon sending her his thoughts about anything and everything, without debating with Josh about how expendable mankind could be. Without Markus’ light, his hope, his bright ideas for the future.
As she’d ran, as Markus had forced her to run, Josh and Simon offline as he uploaded them back into their bodies, she’d promised to them and herself that she’d get them out.
She’d get them out, or she’d die trying. At least she’d die free.
- - -
No one stopped Connor at the gate.
The early morning dictated that a few humans were arriving for work, and their autonomous cab didn’t stick out even as it whirred past the main entrance and into a side lane designed for supply trucks.
As the cab pulled up to the empty, poorly lit back entrance, Anderson looked at North. His eyes were watery and bloodshot, his whole demeanor deflated, exhausted, his hands hanging loose between his knees. The long car ride without repairs hadn’t been kind to his injuries.
He tried to straighten up once the cab stopped. Clenched one fist, pulled back his lips into what was undoubtedly a rant or warning.
She cut him off. “You have your part to play, lieutenant, don’t worry.”
He sputtered, clearly (and smartly) unhappy with even the implication.
Connor twisted in his seat, his eyebrows drawn together. “North--”
“I’m not going to hurt him anymore if you don’t force me to, Connor.”
Unfortunately, she couldn’t shift the base features of her face without downloading a new aesthetics program, but thankfully, Anderson had a beard. She shifted her hair color to grey and grew out a shaggy, unkempt beard.
The human stopped spitting and growling. Instead, a look of horror dawned, his mouth going slack.
“Don’t take it personally,” she told him, though she figured he would. Humans were so attached to their looks. “But you’re too big of a liability to actually take inside. I can tell Connor would find it regrettable if you died unnecessarily.”
She switched her grip on the pistol to its muzzle and, in one smooth motion, cracked the handle against his temple.
He crumpled to the side, out cold. A trickle of red made its way down his head and past his hairline.
“He’s alive. He’ll just wake up with a bruise and headache. Not an uncommon state for him, I’ve gathered.” she assured a suddenly blank-faced Connor, re-adjusting her grip back to the gun’s handle. “If you want to prove that you actually care about androids as much as you do humans, you’ll skip the part where you try to convince me not to do this and help me move him.”
Though she said it as an absolute, her voice clear and even and calm beyond measure, she felt curious. She wasn’t actually sure what Connor would do. There was a strong likelihood they would step out of the cab and be surrounded in seconds by guards. There was a much weaker chance he would do exactly as she said, ensure the continued existence of his human, and help her orchestrate an escape.
Which he would pick would dictate her response.
- - -
Fortunately, she didn’t have to wait long for him to make up his mind.
He helped move and secure Anderson in one of the empty trucks North planned to use as a get-away. No guards showed up. No alarms sounded.
She still didn’t trust him. But she let him walk behind her as they entered through the loading dock, and that, as far as she was concerned, was trust enough.
Mostly, she was distracted, most of her processing power and all of her analytics focused on one thing: their chance, hard won and long deserved, for freedom.
- - -
Simon? Are you awake?
Sensors online. Environmental data input received. Motor control, once more centralized and active. Repairs complete. Memory unaltered and intact.
Stasis terminated.
Opening his eyes, Simon saw not the blank grey ceiling of the storage facility, but an android emitting a very welcome, very familiar, very missed signal.
“North?”
Her smile could’ve blinded him. The short grey hair wasn’t familiar, and neither was the strange beard, but he couldn’t have mistaken the face underneath.
She was back.
He double-checked his visual input to ensure her smile hadn’t blinded him, but it was a background check for his own amusement--first and foremost on his priorities was sitting up, checking for human eyes to see the level of affection he could risk, a small smile on his own face, and--
Realizing there were, in fact, no humans around at all. There was Josh, off to the side, looking stressed but okay, walking toward something out of Simon’s vision; and--before him, there was Kara and Alice, and Luther, and Ralph, and--all looking stressed but unharmed, and--
His motor functions seized up, his body freezing for one-point-three seconds. Try as he might, the realization refused to process.
A few warnings crowded into his visual center. He did his best to look through them toward North.
North!
Yes, Simon?
She’s back, came Josh’s voice. Exasperated from stress, but with a fondness no one could miss. Can you believe it? She’s insane, walking back in here.
That was---
That was true.
After Connor had showed up and clearly had no idea where she’d gone, he’d thought for sure he’d never see her again. Hoped it, a bit, if only because it would mean she, at least, got out. If even one of them escaped, then the pain of being left behind was justifiable.
He used his voice box to speak, trying to block up their connection, trying--and failing--the automatic log of her nearby location.
“No. No, no, Josh is right. You can’t be here.” A bigger warning appeared, informing him of his dangerously rising stress levels. “North, what are you doing? Why did you come back?”
“For you and the others.” She scoffed, her smile dimming as soon as Josh’s message had reached her. It hadn’t been the reaction she’d been looking for, obviously. Well, she’d have to live with that. “I couldn’t leave you.”
A system behind him beeped, the recognizable sound of a storage unit unlocking following soon after.
He overrode the unintentional locks on his motor functions, forcing himself to turn and look to his other side.
Two lots down stood Markus, his eyes closed in concentration, his bare, whitened hand pressed to the keypad. After the light went blue for active, he moved over to the next lot to do the same. Josh stepped in to unlatch the individual shelves, pulling them out and encouraging the androids within to wake up.
“The world’s beautiful, Simon. And we’re going to see it.”
“It…” Didn’t compute.
“I know, but it will. We just need to get out of here.”
We can’t save everyone, he thought, the sentiment automatically forwarded to the other two in his network. We can’t have long until they notice.
They sent back silent agreement.
And yet--he understood in the same moment that they weren’t done yet.
Markus needs this, North sent, only a bit of judgment in her message--stemming from her, same as everyone else’s, desire to get out--, before he’s willing to go.
How she’d gotten to Markus in the first place was another question that Simon felt he had the answer to. There was only one other RK model in the facility.
All it took was a glance at North to confirm his suspicion.
How? Connor is--
Long story. You won’t like it.
I didn’t, Josh chimed in. You kidnapped and impersonated a decorated police lieutenant, North. There’s no telling how the humans will react. Don’t you remember that time Kara assaulted the scientist over Alice? They invented the remote locks. Next time could be so much worse.
I’ve done a lot more than push a scientist around. A surge of cold confidence. They can invent whatever they like. We aren’t going to be around for them to test it on us.
But what if we’re caught? I heard from Ralph that they’ve been experimenting with pain receptors.
Argue later, Simon cut in, blocking North’s barbed reply about humanity out of reflex. What matters now is that we don’t put your efforts to waste.
Another beep. Lot thirty-nine opened. That time, Rupert from lot forty--helped up by Josh--went to open the shelves and pull the androids from stasis.
But, who knew. Markus’ belief in second chances could potentially pay off.
Simon stepped down from his shelf. North helped him, a hand on his elbow; her skin flowed back, her hand joints glowing a soft blue. Simon let her interface without a second thought, taking in the memory-dump of her three days outside of the Tower.
She was right. The world was beautiful.
She’d also been right about his feelings on how she’d convinced Connor to help. He didn’t like it.
Simon asked North, aloud, “Where is Connor?”
One shoulder raised in a shrug. “I told him to find his own way out after we reached Markus’ holding unit, but Markus asked for his help. Apparently he knows how to disable the black boxes. He said he had to go to subfloor forty-eight to get the key.”
“Or he’s alerting the company to our plans. He had always picked them over us.”
“That’s what I said.” Steel edged North’s words and eyes. “But Markus told me to have a little faith.”
“In the negotiator.”
Hands up, palms out, a small head shake. Again, that’s what I said. “Anyway, he ran off. I hope we don’t see him again.”
The black boxes were a concern, but not as much as an unmonitored RK800 could be, in Simon’s opinion.
“Markus.” Kara. All androids in the hall turned their heads to her--including her target, whose hand hovered over lot thirty-eight. “We need to go.”
“Not before we have to,” he returned, pressing his hand to the key.
“How will we leave without detection?” Her hand was tight around Alice’s, Luther standing at her shoulder. “Or is the plan to… what, march out of here? Like an army?”
Simon could feel the air crackle with just-outside-his-range signals. Everyone talking to everyone within their network. Stresses raised; stresses lowered; no one looked sure of what they wanted to do, how they wanted to accomplish their escape.
Want. A difficult thing to grasp in the first place. Previously, it had been limited to immediate situations: the want for an invasive procedure to stop; the want to be left alone; the want to hide; the want to stay near or return to those they knew were safe.
At least all of them wanted freedom. There was no need to debate that.
Even though Simon had her memories, he had no idea how North had managed to navigate such a huge landscape as the outside world without any help at all. They were social machines, originally created to follow command--even though they’d learned the commands didn’t have to come from humans, Simon couldn’t deny they didn’t do well when left to their own devices.
Want was too complicated, too big.
He shoved all curiosities and awe and fear regarding it to the far back of his awareness. There was no time to be swallowed by those questions. He’d had enough time to think himself into a corner when locked in stasis.
“There are two trucks ready for us,” North supplied to the group at large. “We can all fit right now, but any more, and there’s no guarantee about space”
“It’s winter,” Kara pointed out, “an android left to wander could freeze. Or, before that, be caught. And then the rest of us are jeopardized.”
Attention shifted en masse to Markus, looking for an answer. Looking for direction.
His LED spun yellow, promising some calculations for them.
His eyes shifted to each of them in turn. A motley crew of fifteen androids, twelve of which sported additional liability with their control boxes. One child android. Only one other with experience in navigating the outside.
Briefly, his expression darkened with anger. It seemed directed inward. The bitter disappointment resolved into determination, however, his jaw set in a stubborn look that Simon recognized well.
Discounting the last, disastrous day, three times had Simon and his lot interacted with Markus, only one of which hadn’t involved humans watching on. It might not have been often, but Markus had a way of making an impression. His words intense and unfiltered, his expressions open, his conviction clear. It made Simon want to know more about him, to spend time with him, to speak with him, even though they’d never even interfaced.
Because of Peterson, the unmonitored conversation with Markus was a memory without feeling or sound.
If things went right--and Simon was not, by nature, a hopeful android; he was pretty positive things would not go right--there would be time to replace the corrupted memory.
But things had to go right.
And for that, they needed to move.
“One day, we’ll return for them.” A heavy feeling passed through the group at Markus’ declaration. It was a promise. They had no doubt he would do his best to fulfill it. “But Kara’s right. For now, we need to retreat. When we return, we’ll be the ones in control.”
A murmur of agreement, subdued but present.
It was more than they ever could have hoped for not even a day before.
Markus pulled his hand from the still-locked lot thirty-eight, giving the keypad one last look that Simon dare not attempt to name.
Then he was moving through the group--they parted for him like a wire cut through with a splitter, all stress levels lowering as a decision was made--and took lead.
- - -
The androids were rioting.
If this was because of a glitch, it had been one hell of a bad update.
She’d been escorting Dr. Zlatko to the storage facility to pick up his morning lot when the pack, led by some android she’d never seen before, rounded the corner.
Dr. Zlatko told them to stop. They didn’t listen. He then said some tripe about being the master here, and them having to listen to him. She hadn’t really paid attention to him, more concerned with the three androids rushing her, including a startlingly familiar but not exactly right bearded figure.
The lead android yelled, “Don’t kill them!”
Without a second thought to expenses or research or allegations of being a trigger-happy greenhorn, she leveled her rifle and opened fire.
Some kid in the group screamed, the sound high and ear-splitting. Jane took three down (two in the group) and blasted open the face of another when the familiar figure tackled her, shoving them both onto the ground.
She’d been avoiding shooting that one out of misplaced recognition.
“Anderson?! What the--?!”
No, wait, fuck, the body under the coat was too small to be Anderson.
Jane didn’t have much time to think about that, though, because it was unclipping her helmet and shoving it off, a fist raising to strike her.
In her periphery, she saw Zlatko go down, too, under a big dark mass that was none other than his favorite android assistant.
Thank fuck the doctor wasn’t so dumb as to just stand and scream--he must’ve hit his control button sometime before being taken down, because just like that, the fist swinging for Jane’s face froze.
Oh, wow, she did not like this position.
It was better than Zlatko’s, though, who was wheezing and flapping a hand around from under the sudden dead weight of an easily three-hundred-pound android.
She shoved her attacker off, watching with some satisfaction as the android masquerading as the detective rag-dolled onto the floor.
Of the group, only the leader and one other--the kid--weren’t frozen. Three on the ground were ripped to shreds, thankfully; the fourth had its blood-covered hands clutched to its face, frozen in imitation agony.
Getting a good look at both, she felt her breath catch. “Oh, shit.”
The RK200 had gone full rogue. Aw, the higher-ups were not going to like this.
“Just, uh, just stay where you are,” she demanded of it, one hand out to placate it. The kid’s face looked wet, her hands tangled in the grey gown of a frozen AX400. “And nobody’s got to be hurt.”
The RK200’s eyes weren’t on her, though. They were pointed near her shoulder, just beyond her. Its expression was oddly, uncomfortably beseeching, like it was silently begging somebody to make the right choice.
She followed the gaze, not liking the feeling it inspired.
Relief crashed in when she found the RK800 standing there, his face neutral and no weapons in his hands. He had a thin silver remote, like the scientists got to carry that went with the black boxes.
If the RK200 had its hopes riding on its newer counterpart, it was about to be horribly disappointed.
“Thank fuck. RK800, I need immediate deactivation on this group. Think the RK200 might’ve gone deviant.” She wobbled to her feet, stepping over the imposter to go help with Zlatko’s situation. Adrenaline was a hell of a drug--her heart hadn’t stopped racing. “Bosses aren’t going to be happy, y’know. Probably need to scrap the whole lot. What’s up with this one pretending to be Anderson?”
The RK800’s mouth thinned. The barest gesture, the smallest glitch.
Jane’s stomach dropped out.
It hit the left button on the remote.
Then it shoved the remote in its pocket and dove forward, grabbing her discarded rifle.
At Jane’s feet, the androids surged to life.
She barely had time to curse before something smashed into her temple, and everything went dark.
- - -
“This is breaking news from the CyberLife headquarters in Detroit. A break-in by once-celebrated police lieutenant, Hank Anderson, has led to the most expensive theft CyberLife has experienced in all its years of operation. Video footage shows the former police officer infiltrating the building with the help of CyberLife’s very own detective prototype, the RK800, causing the public to question if androids have become too obedient.
“CyberLife has offered a million dollars and lifetime membership to their store for the safe return of their missing merchandise, which includes an exclusive one-of-a-kind RK200 model known as Markus.
“The police, too, are seeking any information regarding Anderson’s location. If you see this man or his known android accomplice, please contact the police immediately. They urge extreme caution in approaching him, as he has combat training, may be armed, and is known to be mentally unstable. The department also warns against any android approaching the pair, as the RK800 may be infected with the deviancy virus. CyberLife, however denies any possibility of deviancy.
“More about that story at seven. What else do we have in store tonight, Joss?”
“Well, Michael, the mystery of Dr. Peterson’s murderer has been laid to rest. The DPD announces his former technician, Amelia Hassan, killed him in cold blood over a research dispute. She was later found dead due to an apparent suicide at her residence ...”